Forgotton Anne – Charming Anime Fairytale Platformer

I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve already seen it somewhere. Forgotten Anne Before. Its visual style clearly reflects the anime of Studio Ghibli, while also reminding of a dozen European authorial cartoons – creating the feeling that you are already familiar with the game. This charming adventure is full of vibrant characters, interesting puzzles, and unexpected gameplay ideas, even though the gameplay is not the main focus in the beautifully animated story by ThroughLine Games.

Forgotton Anne is best described through comparisons with other projects. The platforming makes you remember the original “Prince of Persia,” only dying here seems impossible. The game is not unfamiliar with a touch of exploratory enthusiasm, inherent in classic quests like Monkey Island, paired with non-linear dialogue inserts. All of this is held together by relatively simple puzzles using Anima – the local magical energy that can be drawn from batteries, generators, and even small inhabitants of the game world, if you have no conscience at all.

Mechanical wings of the main heroine work on it, allowing her to climb into hard-to-reach corners of locations. Considering that many local puzzles are built around transferring energy from one place to another, Anima must be used wisely, exploiting the gadget only when absolutely necessary.

The world of the game itself is a place where forgotten things live – inanimate objects like clothing or furniture, dreaming of reuniting with their owners. There are only two people here: Anne, whose role we are about to take on, and the grumpy old master Bonku, who apparently oversees this magical place. Wait, that’s not all.

Anne’s job is to maintain order in the realm of the forgotten, and the game begins right at the moment when an army of rebellious junk deprives the district of electricity. Within a few seconds, we are offered to decide the fate of a suspicious scarf, either killing it or setting it free. Despite not being advertised anywhere, such decisions have quite visible consequences – not on the level of Mass Effect, of course, but there is still some freedom of play. Even though as a character, Anne is somewhat disappointing and is revealed more or less later than it should be.

Fortunately, the various talking objects make up for this shortcoming with their charisma. The developers have put in perhaps unjustifiably much effort, giving each little thing its own character and accent. Here you can encounter, for example, a lava lamp with a lazy Californian speech, a dashing British mannequin with a rapier at the ready, and an old-fashioned camera that speaks like a wise old lady, as expected from years of experience.

Accompanied by high-quality voice acting, the soundtrack is equally impressive, combining grand orchestral compositions with simpler melodies. The music flawlessly emphasizes the atmosphere of the locations and sometimes cleverly integrates into the gameplay, helping to notice certain characters. The camera works in a similar way, guiding you along the right path with precise movements – without such contextual hints, it would sometimes be difficult to figure out where to go next.

However, not everything goes smoothly with the puzzles and platforming. The timing of jumps is quite challenging, and the tasks, mostly based on interacting with moving elements of the levels, levers, and transferring Anima to various mechanisms, do not pose any particular difficulties. Honestly, jumping on destroyed bridges and restoring the operation of factories turned out to be not as interesting as being in the warm company of forgetful characters.

In general, the local puzzles are quite easy to solve, although I must admit that I had to spend some time on the task with the rotary phone. Most likely, it’s because I’ve never touched one in my life.

As in any decent anime, the plot here gradually becomes emotionally engaging: Anne strives to learn about her past and find out who her mother was, while Master Bonku, for unknown reasons, takes care of the heroine and clearly hides something. Does it sound like a good cartoon? That’s what it is. Forgotton Anne is a superbly animated story, although its interactive part, unfortunately, is not deep enough to make the game consistently captivating from start to finish.